Mere Wickedness
by Ysabet
Summary: A soliloquy; Tora considers his past and the reasons why he hasn't eaten Ushio just yet.


Mere Wickedness  
By Ysabet  
(Insert the usual disclaimers here and bow in the direction of Ushio & Tora's creator, Kazuhiro Fujito nine times).  
  
  
I wonder if he knows how much I watch him.  
  
There he is, sprawled in sleep across his bed... so helpless. Stupid Brat--- I coud take him in three, maybe four bites. From where I hover on the wind outside his window I can see his chest rising in breaths..... one..... two..... three..... four.....  
  
Why do I watch Ushio so? He's nothing much, just a slip of a human, small even against others of his age. Well-muscled, he would be a little tough to eat; but tasty..... Angry, exasperating, stubborn--- oh, so stubborn!!!!! Thick-headed, weak little man-boy, he infuriates me sometimes.  
  
But I watch him and I do not kill him. Why? The night is all around me--- I can feel the moonlight calling me out into the sky, and the wind is cool in my fur. I can smell the river nearby, and this world is all new, just waiting for me.  
  
So why am I hanging here outside his window, watching Ushio-Brat breath? Five..... six..... seven..... eight.....  
  
When he released me, I planned to eat him immediately, of course. I lied to him, told him I wouldn't, then struck him down. But that damned Spear made him its own, and he--- IT--- beat me *again*.....  
  
HhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhHHHhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...........  
  
He caught me out in my lie, fought me to a standstill. That won the right of truth, if nothing else; I cannot lie to Ushio now, not from that moment on. If I choose to eat him, I will tell him so. And surely I will eventually, won't I? He's just a human, just Ushio-Brat.  
  
A funny thing, that. I can't recall paying attention to the name of *any* human for very long over the many centuries. Oh, the occasional sorcerer or warlord, but even those would fade in time. I have so very much of it--- time, that is. What have humans ever been to me but food, after all? I am bakemono.  
  
Aotsuki Ushio.  
  
Some of them are more interesting than others, of course. I remember that, just before I was imprisoned Down There, I was going to take a look at that warlord--- what was his name? Oh, Oda Nobunaga..... Now *his* name I recall; I heard it again when I went to the Brat's school the second day after I was set free. Apparently he did well, for a human.  
  
The odd thing is, I cannot recall ever knowing the name of that thrice-bedamned, misbegotten samurai that trapped me Down There, that put the Kemono No Yari through me and pinned me to the cold stone. I look at the sleeping boy; I can remember the samurai's face, and there is a certain resemblance..... especially when the Spear takes him over.  
  
The boy is dreaming now. I can see Ushio's eyelids trembling from where I rest on the wind, and his toes and fingers twitch like a young animal's do when they dream. So humans do that too. Interesting. I wonder what he dreams about?  
  
I lean back against the breast of the wind. I do not like to dream. My dreams are mostly of Down There, darkness and cold stone and far, far too much silence. And time. The long years passed no quicker for me Down There than for those up here. Sometimes I slept for many days at once, but I usually dreamed of being imprisoned when I did. And I had very little hope of being released.  
  
Maybe that is why I do not kill him. He released me, though on the strength of a lie. But I am a monster; monsters do not feel gratitude, do they? Of course not.  
  
And yet..... There is this terrible, itchy, burdensome feeling in the back of my mind when I think about him pulling that bastard Spear from out of me. I remember the moment when I broke through the shrine doors and felt the sunlight again for the first time in five hundred years..... Ohhhh, I remember that. I was fleeing from the Spear all over again, and yet I recall that moment as though it was the best thing that had ever happened to me: sunlight on my fur, and the air clear and sweet in my throat. Movement where there had been none for SO long, the rush of it and the delight of freedom singing through me.  
  
So do I feel gratitude? Is that why I do not kill Ushio-Brat? Maybe. Or maybe not.  
  
I turn to look at him again. He is snoring now. Some bakemonotachi would kill him just for that.  
  
How stupid he looks while he sleeps.  
**************************************************  
Now I am on the roof of the shrine. This is my favorite place to sit and watch my new world from. The tiles hold the heat of the sun well, and the roof is strong enough that I need not shed weight to rest here. And there is a long, flat piece of tile at the very top of the roof that I like to scratch designs onto with my claws. No-one will ever see them but me, but I enjoy it. That Ushio-Brat is not the only artist here.  
  
We bakemonotachi are not usually very creative. We steal, we hoard, we sometimes have others make things for us--- but beyond that, it is not a common thing for us to create. Oni sometimes make things, weaponry and armor and suchlike. Perhaps it is the Brat's artwork that makes him interesting to me. Such a strange thing, the urge to create: to make something that has never been seen before in the world. And its not like Ushio's pictures are very good (at least to my eyes, and whose else would I care about); most of them are complete shit as far as I can tell. I wonder why he keeps making them?  
  
I wonder why I care?  
  
I can see his window from here. And, through it, I can see that damned Spear leaning against the wall by his bed. Ushio must still be dreaming; he has reached out in his sleep to find it. He grips it now, as it grips him always, always. Does he know that, I wonder? Does the idiot know that he belongs far, far more to the Kemono No Yari that it could ever belong to him? Ushio bears the Spear, but it wraps around his soul, pierces it, rides it like a tame ox. It will never let him go.  
  
Stupid boy. I could almost pity him. If a monster could feel pity. Can I? Why not?  
  
That bloody bastard of a Spear..... Ssssssss. I rake my claws across the tiles, sharpening my talons. While I was trapped Down There the Spear worked at me, trying to dig out the parts of my soul that were evil (I am aware that I do have a soul; most bakemonotachi do, though not all; it's what my lightning springs from). It worried at me like a dog, and it burned cold and bitter as salt tears in my flesh..... for five hundred years. Five hundred years.  
  
Not that I would know anything about tears..... But I know about darkness, and cold stone, and the passing of too much time.  
**************************************************  
I have slept for a little, resting here on the cooling tiles. I did not dream; good. The clouds have cleared above me and the wind is rising, making me think about hunting in the tiny bit of forestland east. There are feral pigs there, most enjoyable to chase and eat; their fear is sweet to me. I could hunt humans too, if I really wanted to.  
  
But I probably won't. Why not? Well..... Firstly, the Brat would then hunt ME (he'd find out somehow, he always finds things out). And he might win. And, somehow, humans just aren't as appealing to eat as they once were. Perhaps I have lost the taste for human flesh.  
  
I am a monster. I do not really regret the humans that I have killed and eaten. They are dead, I am alive, and it is now, not then. The last time I ate a human was five hundred years ago. And..... I have always understood it that to be evil is to leave regrets behind. Am I not a terrible, evil bakemono?~?  
  
Am I not?  
  
Lying here on the shrine roof, I remember something that happened a little before my imprisonment. There was a traveling priest, a houshi, that I once fought; he actually stood and talked with me for a little while before we began our battle. Imagine--- he tried to convince me to change my ways! And I laughed at him, oh, how I laughed!!! Why should I change? To be evil is to be changeless, hard as stone, uncaring..... unhurt.....  
  
And yet, and yet..... He said something, that foolish houshi, that I have remembered down the long years. He said: That I was not truely evil in my nature, that I had instead chosen mere wickedness over good. Mere wickedness! And that the truely evil were thus because they were created so. I, said the houshi, had chosen wickedness out of error and because it was all I knew. The fool was very serious about this.  
  
I ate him, of course.  
  
But he fought well, I'll give him that. And he actually laughed at me, lying there in a welter of blood at the last. He said: 'Someday you will change in your own despite, I can see it down the long road of your life--- Someday you will choose otherwise, but first you will pay for your error in the coin of time.'   
  
Stupid priest. I killed him quickly then. He made a good meal, but his words disturbed me.  
  
The long years Down There in the dark..... I can't forget them. Nothing, nothing but four walls, a stone floor with one hundred fourty-six cracks (I had time to count them over and over), a stone ceiling, everything pressing in on me, pain-pain-pain of the bastard Spear eating away at the darkness that I had built inside of me.....  
  
Hrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhrrrrrrrr..... My claws rake the tiles again, cracking them like bones. I will not think of this any longer. I'd rather do something else.  
**************************************************  
That was pleasant. I flew down to that shop that Ushio likes, where the humans make and sell those spicy things he calls "pi-zhaa". Idiots, they had a nice wide door in the back of the building that they had opened to the cool night air and to any bakemono who might wander by..... All those humans making the pi-zhaa and puttingit into flat boxes, so hot and tasty; and they couldn't see me at all! So I took a stack or two of the boxes outside for a snack. Ushio will be so annoyed that he missed this!  
  
I've learned to throw away the boxes by now. They don't taste as good as the pi-zhaa does. I think I like the ones with the little salty fishes on them best.  
**************************************************  
I fly back home. Strange, strange, strange to think of having a home, especially a shrine. But it is mine far more than it is anyone else's; it was built because of me.  
  
Ushio-Brat is still sleeping; I light down softly, cat-footed on his window-ledge. He does not snore so loudly now; good. I wonder if I snore? No-one has ever said.  
  
No-one has ever really talked to me until now, except maybe for that foolish houshi. Never, ever.....  
  
Not until now.  
  
And talk the Brat does, incessantly. To me, I think, more than to anyone. I wonder why that is? He has human friends..... Those two females especially: the one that can see me always, and the fierce one with sharp teeth in her voice. She'll probably be Ushio's mate someday, if he lives that long. Hhrraaahrr!  
  
He talks to me a lot. About the females, about the monsters we fight, about the world, about the Spear (as if I wanted to hear about *that*). He yells at me, he laughs at me, he fights with me as though we came from the same litter of spawn; he talks, and talks, and talks.  
  
To me. Who seldom heard anything other than my own voice for the last two centuries or so. Before that, the shrine was still in use and the newer buildings had not yet been built. I could hear faint voices from those above as they went about their business, but they could not hear me, not from all the way Down There. And by then I had given up hope, anyway.  
  
But he talks to me. And he is not really afraid of me anymore, not even when we fight. I don't know why! Stupid, stupid man-boy, idiot, Ushio-idiot who talks to me.....  
  
So I watch him while he sleeps.  
  
He shifts on his bed; as usual, he has thrown off the covers and lies sprawled in abandonment across the sheets, throat exposed. So helpless, so easy to kill. Mine to kill, if I choose to do the deed.  
  
But I won't do it while he sleeps; I chose some time ago that I would not. Where would the fun be in that? I almost did it once, when I was only a few days free--- that got me into a *lot* of trouble. The boy can be resourceful for such and idiot. And then, there's the Spear.....  
  
Hhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.......... Ushio has rolled onto his side; the Spear has slipped down against the bed--- it falls foward, towards me---  
  
And I catch it. I hold it for a moment, feeling it stare at me, feeling it recognize me. It knows the taste of my blood. I carefully lean it back against the wall.  
  
A strange thing. The Spear should have hurt me just for touching it. My hands should burn, should be scalded as if by boiling water. But they are not.  
  
A *very* strange thing.  
  
Ushio sighs in his sleep and mutters something. Sometimes I think he senses me watching him. So I leave, slipping back out through the window to drift upwards towards the stars. Dawn will be coming soon. I should sleep some more.  
**************************************************  
I rest on my shrine roof, my home. I have a few possessions that I keep there, things that I have picked up now and then since I was freed just because I like them: a wooden comb, stones with interesting patterns and colors, a tooth from an akuma that we fought, a bunch of shining keys from one of those metal vehicles that the humans drive, a gaijin coin or two. I keep them wrapped in a piece of silk that I took from a human's yard where it hung drying after being washed. While I lie here awaiting sleep, I hope for no dreams and idly sort through my stones. And think too much.  
  
Why do I watch him? I do not know, not really. But he makes me think of what the houshi told me about my choosing mere wickedness.  
  
I am bakemono, I am a monster, fanged and clawed, and the lightning is *my* Spear. I am drenched in the blood of many, many human deaths (though they were five hundred years ago). If I were to face the foolish houshi that laughed at me so long ago, I wonder what he would say now? I have paid my coin of time.  
  
What has it purchased me? More time?  
  
Mere wickedness. It sounds so..... petty. Not terrible and beautiful, not fierce at all. Small and shallow.  
  
Perhaps..... Sometimes I think of this: that his 'mere wickedness' is like Down There, a cold room of stone that a bakemono can be trapped in. It's hard to come up out of it (even if one wants to), especially when one cannot see any open doors anywhere or hear any voices that might be calling. And there was no-one calling for me, ever.  
  
But now the doorway is open. I may never choose to go through it, to come up out of my cold stone prison. But who knows? In the meantime, I can see the sunlight falling through the open door, calling me, and the air is clear and sweet in my throat.  
  
I look across at the Brat sleeping in his room one more time; and then I close my eyes in sleep also. It will be dawn soon.  
  
  
*************************************************************************************************************************  
YSABET'S NOTES: I wrote this after going through the first eleven volumes of tankoubon (collected manga) of the Ushio & Tora series, while working on chapter five of my "Jaws-Claws" story (to be out in a few days). Note that I say 'going through'-- I can't read them yet! (I'm getting there, though). But, man, they're good. This whole series seems to be about redemption, if anything, and I guess that's what I was trying to work through here. From what I understand about the series (to be shown in later volumes, currently being bought by yours truely), Tora was once human but lost his humanity completely, forgetting his name, his origins, everything, becoming what is apparently called a 'nothing'. I dunno; gotta get learning that Japanese quickly! I'll be writing more later; please review! Arigato...... 


End file.
